There is no other
path of racial safety. It is not our present concern to deal with the
problems of infancy and childhood as they require, and surely we need
not wait to prove that nursing motherhood cannot safely be superseded,
but must be retained and safeguarded.
If this postulate be granted, we have to determine how it comes about
that the German figures, for instance, are showing this extraordinarily
rapid decline in maternal lactation. As has already been noted in
passing, we must reject the suggestion that the natural type of women is
changing. Such a change of natural type in any living race can occur
only through selection for parenthood, and such selection in the case in
question can scarcely be imagined to occur in the direction of choosing
women who are naturally less capable of nursing. On the contrary, the
tendency of the selective principle must always be toward the greater
survival of infants whose mothers can nurse them, and who in their turn,
if they are to be women, will be more likely to be able to nurse their
children. Further, the action of selection cannot demonstrate itself
more quickly than is permitted by the length of human generations. It
must therefore be rejected as any interpretation of this case. If women
are ceasing to be able to nurse their babies, and if this change is
occurring with such extraordinary rapidity as the German figures
indicate, plainly the explanation must be found in the action of some
recent and novel condition or conditions upon womanhood.
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